


the cruel, unbreaking

by izabellwit



Series: goodbye, old friend [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Ableist Language, Anger, Angst, Astrid internalized a lot of Trent's awful worldview and this is in her pov so, Caleb Widogast is a Mess, Caleb Widogast's Backstory, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Friends to Enemies, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Outsider, Past Abuse, Past Brainwashing, Past Relationship(s), Reunions, Self-Hatred, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, Victim Blaming, Yeahhh, and also committing mass treason, when your old childhood friend you thought was dead turns out to be alive and kicking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-09-01 18:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20262208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izabellwit/pseuds/izabellwit
Summary: Some meetings are fated to happen; some pasts are too great to outrun. Bren Aldric Ermendrud knows that better than most.Sixteen years after the fire, Astrid and Eodwulf hunt down the Mighty Nein.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: I discovered Critical Role like a week ago, and I've been binge-watching ever since. Or trying to, anyway. Spoiled myself enough to write fic, so please forgive any accidental timeline/history mistakes. I've only watched the show in full up to episode 16. (And yes, before anyone asks: I know Molly dies.)
> 
> Anyway, the whole mess of Caleb's backstory and the mystery of Astrid and Eodwulf is just... so exciting to me? So I really wanted to write a fic on that. It kinda turned into a joint character study of Astrid and Caleb both along the way. Or, outsider pov analysis of Caleb and his relationship with Mighty Nein? Anyway, it's bound to be fun. 
> 
> Note: This fic is entirely in Astrid's pov, but once it's complete, I'll also be writing a companion piece of Caleb's thoughts and views on the reunion as well.

She gets the orders in the evening, three weeks off from Harvest’s Close. She has just finished one job and only just sending in the report when the papers come through, the print neat, the signature looping. They are not official orders; the looping hand is that of her teacher, not the Cerberus Assembly or the King, which makes this a personal mission rather than a required one. 

She is not surprised to receive it, nor upset; rather, she is amused, smiling as she reads it through. Trent does this sometimes, to her and Eodwulf both—little errands and hunts and bids for their time, as if they are still students, as if he is still testing them. It makes her feel warm to receive them. To know, even after all this time, even with his new students and new duties, Trent Ikithon still thinks fondly of her.

The orders are short, and swift. Curt, like every instruction he ever gave them. There is a group known as the Mighty Nein, near the border of Xhorhas. They are traitors to the Empire, and they have become a nuisance.

There is a group called the Mighty Nein, and they need to die.

She folds the paper in her fingers, tucks it in her waistband. She takes her time in thumbing through her spell books, picking and choosing which will go with her on the journey. Then she pulls on her cloak and goes to find Eodwulf. They have not had much time for each other, as of late—this is a good chance for them to catch up. An easy assassination, and then drinks after.

Astrid is already looking forward to it.

.

It is not that Astrid grows up loving magic, like Bren, or looking for it, like Eodwulf. It is just that it is useful, and Astrid grows up wanting to be useful too. When her mother buckles down and complains about the weight of the crops on her back, Astrid wants to lighten the load. When her father curses the late rains, the dry fields, Astrid wants to make the sky pour. When Bren falls off a tree and snaps his arm beneath him, she hovers useless by his side as he screams and wishes hopelessly, desperately, that she could fix it. 

When the Soltryce Academy people come, Bren conjures fire and Eodwulf charms them all. But Astrid—Astrid reaches out and breaks their cart in two, as neat and as violently as she breaks the trees for their firewood, and then mends it back as if it’d never been broken at all.

They smile at her, the Academy people, each and every one of them. In the back of their group there is a man, with white hair and colorless eyes, so old he is almost ancient. He wears the robes of someone official, and when he looks at her—at all of them, Astrid and Eodwulf and Bren—there is something bright and pleased in his pale eyes.

“Wonderful,” he says to them. He rests a gnarled hand on Bren’s head, gives a fond nod to Eodwulf. To Astrid, a smile. There is something like intent there, in the weight of his hand. Something like a promise in the look in his eyes.

There is power in his fingertips and magic in his words, and Astrid has never wanted anything more.

.

It’s not hard to track down the Mighty Nein, because they are loud, and vibrant, and violent. They are not as loud as some groups, admittedly—some in their number must think well of keeping a low profile—but the chaos they leave in their wake is unmistakable. Astrid has tracked down myths and legends; these bumbling fools are almost too easy. With Eodwulf by her side, it is child’s play.

(If Bren had been with them—but no. That is a foolish thought. She has not thought of Bren in ages, too caught up in work, but something about this job is nostalgic, tugging at the edges of her mind. It is too easy, perhaps. Too easy, and once, Bren would have laughed and said: “Let us finish this quickly, yes? Let us show our teacher we are beyond such games.”

And once, too, Astrid would have turned to Eodwulf and replied, “He talks like he isn’t the most delighted, or the first to set his hands on fire.”

“Hah, well,” Eodwulf had said, as Bren turned bright red beside her. “That’s our Bren.”)

But these are useless thoughts. These are useless memories. And regardless. Despite the nostalgia, despite her other duties, despite little things like travel and time: it is not hard. Finding the Mighty Nein, tracking their location, narrowing in for the hunt—

—together, it takes them barely a week.

(Once, it would have taken them barely a day. But that was long ago.)

.

Bren is bumbling, Bren is bright, Bren is confidence and knowing and  _ did-you-hear?  _ He remembers almost everything and loves to prove it, and he is quick with wit and laughter besides. Bren is going to be something, someday. Bren is going to be someone great. Everyone knows it—from his proud parents to the Academy recruiters, to their teachers at the Academy to Trent Ikithon. Everyone knows it, and no one knows it more than Bren himself.

Astrid knows it too. She knew it as a child, knowing Bren only distantly; she knew it as a student, knowing Bren as a classmate; she knows it now, as Trent’s disciple, knowing Bren as a friend, as a something, as a maybe more. She knows Bren is going to be something, someday, and it never fails to warm her heart, the fact he can look at her and think the very same thing.

.

They attack the Mighty Nein at dawn.

Dawn, objectively, is a great time for surprise attacks. No one is awake, the guard (if there is one) is almost half-asleep, and people tend to assume that if they are to be attacked, it will be in the dead of night. Daybreak means the danger has passed. Sunrise, to the unknowing, is safety.

Sunrise, Astrid knows, is when even the mighty are at their weakest.

It is Astrid who approaches first—who steps forward, barely one hundred feet away, and flings out her hands to call the magic to her. At her direction, the earth trembles. At her will, the earth breaks.

The distant silver thread of the Mighty Nein’s alarm spell wakes them up too late.

Rocks fly, and yelling follows, shouts and screams and curses snarled into the air. Distant figures scramble to regain their ground. Astrid walks forward, long strides and an even gait, and smiles faintly at their resistance, the magic she can feel building in the air, the taste of ash on her tongue. A fire spell?

She casts Counterspell as easy as breathing. Fire is nothing to her. Fire is useless. The first friend Astrid ever had wore fire like a cloak and threw sparks everywhere, uncaring of the scorch marks he left behind him. Astrid could block fire in her sleep.

Still—her smile curdles at the reminder. The fading flames make her stomach tight. Her fingers clench and curl in the air, and the earth gives a vicious, violent, petty twist. The distant silhouette of the spellcaster falls to their knees.

From the sending stone tied to her wrist, she can hear Eodwulf laughing. He is already there, of course, right in the thick of it—Astrid as the earth breaker, the ground shaker; Eodwulf as the sly tongue, the charmer. It’s a game, now, between the two of them: will he convince the group to slaughter one another, or will Astrid get to them first?

_ “Incoming!” _ Eodwulf sings, bright to her ears.  _ “Drinks will be on you, dear, I’ve got them right where I want them.” _

She picks up the pace, grinning outright, shaking the memories from her head. Oh no, not today—she will not be paying for their drinks tonight! “I don’t think so.”

_“That starting spell didn’t kill a single one of them,”_ Eodwulf tutts back. _“Nice show, but little impact. Watch and learn, my friend, _this _is how you stamp out—”_

And he stops.

“Eodwulf?”

He makes a noise. Soft, involuntary. It rings from the sending stone clear as a bell, and sends ice shooting down her spine. “Eodwulf!”

_ “No,” _ he says. His voice is distant, fearful. Her silver-tongued friend, reduced to a stuttering whisper. Astrid’s blood runs cold.  _ “No, wait, you can’t be, you are—are you—?” _

There is a snapping sound, a yell, a distant flurry of sparks and lightning. Eodwulf’s voice cuts off.

Astrid reaches out her hand, fury and hatred and fear singing in her gut— _ not him too _ —and tears the earth apart.

.

This moment will ring clear in her memory for years to come. Astrid, standing there, an academy student for barely a year. Eodwulf, to her right, looking sick. Bren to her left, practically shaking with excitement, hands clasped behind his back and smile bright.

The man from a year ago stands before them, the old man with his long white beard and gnarled hands. His eyes crinkle over at them, smiling even as he speaks with their teachers. Eodwulf cringes at the sight. Astrid wonders. And Bren, bright and knowing, leans over to whisper in her ear. 

“We’re not in trouble, I bet. I think… I think we got  _ chosen _ .” 

In the end, Bren has the right of it. They are not in trouble. The three of them—some of the brightest, the boldest, the most skilled—they have been hand-picked. Hand-chosen. They have one teacher, now, and they will train under him alone. The old man, Trent Ikithon. 

“It is an honor,” their teachers say to them, later, as they pack their bags. “To be chosen for this. It is an honor.”

She believes them.

.

Astrid rips the earth apart and leaves the Mighty Nein to the mercy of unfaltering stone-cold shrapnel. She doesn’t even look to see if it’s hit them; she is already by Eodwulf’s side, her hand at his neck. His head is lulling, his eyes dull—a spell of some kind? It must be—but his pulse beats steady at her fingers.

Her hands clench, magic tearing free from her hold, each word of the spell ripped from her throat. She is suddenly, blindingly angry. What has done this to him? There is ash in Eodwulf’s hair and blood trickling from his temple, and she is going to tear these people apart for this. She is going to rip them limb from limb.

But first: Eodwulf. She tucks his arms to his sides, gentle and kind, then slips a small ring from the bag at her side and onto her fingers. Trinkets such as these—small items filled with spells stored and saved for moments like this—are expensive, only for emergencies, and she does not hesitate as she presses the ring to Eodwulf’s forehead and lets the teleportation incantation take hold.

His body vanishes, spirited away to a safe house a few miles off. With luck, she will be back by his side before he awakens. Astrid tucks the empty ring in her pack and rises to her feet. Eodwulf is safe, and now—now, she will rip the Mighty Nein to pieces.

She can hear them coming for her. Footsteps pounding on loose earth, high voices shouting swears in the Common tongue. Astrid smiles and turns to meet them. There is magic building at her palms, violence in the set of her hands. There are words of power on the tip of her tongue, and then she looks across the battlefield and her voice slams stone-cold in her throat.

.

This moment Astrid will remember for years to come. Her new teacher, Trent Ikithon, looking upon them with something like pride and expectation. Bren, beaming ear-to-ear. Beside her, Eodwulf, still shaking, but now from excitement rather than fear. 

The three of them, standing there, side by side—once just the three nobodies from a small village, now students together, a team, a unit. She looks across and sees them smiling, and it is the easiest thing in the world to smile back. To meet their eyes and match their laughter. 

And she knows, then, with stone-cold certainty, with all the presence and weight of prophecy: together, they will conquer anything.

And they are together, then. Astrid, Bren, Eodwulf. Three friends, destined for something greater. 

In that moment, she thinks they are unbreakable.

_ . _

He is different, but she knows him. She knows the shape of his face, the color of his hair, the curve of his eyes and the bend of his smile. He is older, the sixteen years since she last saw him stark on his face. He is—worn, starving thin, with a bent back and hair longer than the crew-cut he should have. He is different, but she still knows him. 

Bren.

The shock of it hits her like a blow. She chokes on her tongue, her will waning, her hands twisting out of her spell to reach out, helpless and disbelieving, reaching for him. Bren. Bren, her first friend, her first almost. Bren, the boy who set trees on fire and admired the flame. Bren: the best of them, the one everyone knew would do great things, the one who was always the first to smile, to laugh, to share a joke.

Bren, who is not moving, who stands there a few feet away, ash and dust coating long hair, blue eyes wide and his face gone white and empty.

“Bren?” Astrid whispers, and he looks her in the eye and says nothing at all.

Too late, she remembers where she is. She flinches back, hands rising, words on her tongue—but her chance has been lost, the tide turned. Astrid pulls away from the wild slash of a sword only to trip right in the path of the monk. She sees the swing. She sees the strength behind it, the intent of the blow. But it is coming too fast to dodge.

The staff slams into the side of Astrid’s head with a solid  _ crack. _

Her vision goes white, then black, and then swims back with spots burning bright behind her eyelids. She’s on the ground now, face-down, her hands pressing flat against dusty earth. Her head throbs like an open wound. She tries uselessly to push up on her feet, and the pain nearly sends her right back to the dirt.

But Astrid is not a Vollstrecker for nothing. She has not spent years and years of training, learning,  _ living,  _ only to be taken out here. She pushes up from the ground and stands on her own two feet. 

She gets up just in time for the sleep spell to smack her right in the face.

She does not see the castor, nor hear the words, but she can feel it—the drug-like pull of the spell, the drag of it. She struggles against it, fighting with all her might to throw it off—but her head is spinning and her skull aches and  _ Bren, that’s Bren, how is he— _

And Astrid finally falls.

_ . _

  
  


_ . _

  
  


_ . _

  
  


_ “May I go see him?” Astrid asks, three months after everything. Her voice has gone quiet, weak, almost-but-not-quite begging. Her throat is tight. Her hands, white-knuckled on the door. _

_ Trent closes his book, and he looks at her, and she can read the truth in his face. _

_ “No, Astrid.” His voice is grave and his eyes are dark. “I’m afraid that Bren has become… a danger. To you, and to others.” He looks back at his books and the set of his mouth tells her all she needs to know. “I’m sorry, my student. But you cannot see him.” _

_ “I understand,” Astrid whispers, and she slips back out the door with her eyes stinging. She knows, then, for certain—Bren is gone. Bren is good as dead. She is never getting him back.  _

_ She does not ask about Bren again.  _


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Astrid and Bren meet face-to-face after sixteen years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm basically just speed-writing these chapters and posting them as soon as I'm done. I haven't been this excited in a long time for a fic like this, I think. Very fun!! 
> 
> In other news I finally got to episode 18, and it was... so good. So very, very good. I mean, it hurt to watch, but it also pretty much fueled this whole chapter, haha. 
> 
> **Warnings** for... a lot of nasty stuff. This chapter deals pretty heavily with Caleb's backstory and Trent Ikithon's generally awful everything, so... yeah. Gaslighting, torture, murder, indoctrination, familicide... Also, dehumanization and the usual disgust people tend to direct towards Nott/goblins in general, and an undertone of a frankly insulting and ableist attitude taken towards mental health, because Trent is an Awful Person and unfortunately, Astrid (and Eodwulf, and Bren/Caleb to lesser degree) have picked up on a lot of it. 
> 
> If there's anything in this chapter I forgot to give a head's up about, let me know and I'll add it on here! With that said, I hope you enjoy part 2!

She wakes up with the sharp jolt of the unnatural, the spell's hold breaking apart. She shakes off the haze and her eyes snap open, her arms twisting in her bindings, reaching for her spellbooks, her materials, her magic. It is not a conscious choice, this struggle— this is instinct, pure and simple, borne after nearly two decades of relentless, thorough training. 

There is metal at her wrists and a void at her side where her spellbooks usually rest. The kind of stealth and skill needed to slip on chains and rob someone like her, even if under a Sleep spell, is near-impossible. Her head snaps back to spot the culprit, and she catches the edge of a shadow, a small figure darting away, their hood drawn up high. 

It’s an ill-advised action: just that slight movement makes Astrid’s vision spin. Her head is still aching from the monk’s earlier blow. She can taste dust in her mouth, turned pasty and thick with a mix of saliva and blood. 

She is sitting up, manacles wrapped tight around her wrists, pinned to the earth by cold metal—a sword, she thinks, when the edge bites into her wrists. Dawn bleeds on the edges of the horizon, blue and still, and the pale light casts the ruined campground in a strange glow. They are still at the site of impact, but the group has used Astrid’s unconsciousness to their advantage—the chains, and the half-circle they form around her. One presence at her back, and two by her sides—the firbolg on her right, the tiefling on her left—and the last three standing before her, the shadow that slipped on her chains and woke her, darting beside two taller figures. A human woman dressed in blue, and beside her, pale even in the creeping daylight, is—

“Bren,” Astrid says, and this time it is not a question.

.

The first night after their training with Trent Ikithon begins, Astrid collapses into the bed of her shared room and weeps. Her muscles ache. Her hands tremor. Her magic feels thin and drawn, barely there, a withdrawal that makes her head ache.

“If you throw up on me,” Bren says, from beside her, face down on the pillow, “I will push you off this bed.”

“You would not,” Astrid whispers back, too hoarse to speak any louder. Her throat rasps, and she can taste blood. “Bet you can barely lift your arm.”

Bren hisses into his pillow, and at the end of the bed, Eodwulf sighs. “Shut up,” he says. “Or I’ll push _ both _ you off. I can do it, too.”

“You brute, you,” Bren mumbles, and then yelps when Eodwulf pinches his side. “Ow! Aren’t I supposed to be the leader?”

“Just because you can read the spellbooks faster doesn’t mean Master Ikithon is making you leader.”

“Sure it does, Eodwulf, that’s exactly what that means.”

“Wow. You just coast on through life, don’t you?”

Bren protests this, but the argument is playful rather than biting, sleepy and fond. Astrid turns her face into the covers and smiles despite everything. She aches. She aches, so terribly, from head to toe, and her training will only get harder from here. But with Bren and Eodwulf here beside her, with the memory of the way Master Ikithon looked over them today, not proud but still _ pleased… _

On her face, her smile stretches wide and stretches bright. Her fingers twitch with anticipation. Today, she trembles and aches. Tomorrow, she fights. And one day—one day she might even be something.

Her body aches, but Astrid tries not to mind it. One day, she thinks, it might not hurt at all.

.

“Astrid,” Bren replies, after a pause. He waits too long for the words to sound casual, her name awkward on his tongue. His eyes are like hollows in his face. The small figure at his side tugs hard at his coat, hissing something in Common, too low for Astrid to hear.

Her eyes snap to the figure and narrow. The ears, the vivid green skin ill-hidden under the bandages and hood… a goblin? It must be. And yet: the way it pulls at Bren’s coat, familiar, the set of its shoulders— it is not afraid. It _ belongs? _

She looks up to Bren, to see what he thinks of this creature hanging off his lapels, and finds him watching her, instead. His jaw is clenched so tight she can see the tension in his neck. He doesn’t answer the goblin, just reaches down and pushes it behind him, as if trying to shield it from Astrid.

There are words, of course, snapped questions and arguing in the Common tongue. These people, fumbling and ill-experienced, desperate for answers. The monk blusters and the tiefling dimples and Astrid ignores them all.

She doesn’t answer their questions; she is not even listening. She studies Bren instead, drinking in the details she had missed, in that split-second recognition from before. He is—clean-shaven, dressed in a shabby coat and a trailing scarf. Dusty and dirty, dark circles of exhaustion pressed under his eyes like thumbprints. He holds himself tall, but the confidence suits him ill, now—she can read the uncomfortable pinch of his face, see the way his shoulders start to hunch under her attention, as if to hide. He is rumpled, worn, off-balance—but the Bren she remembers stood straight and tall without having to force it, and cut his hair short because he hated the mess, wore the uniform proudly and did not let it crease, not ever.

The man standing before her, sixteen years later, is a stranger and friend all at once. There is a cat winding at his heels and shadow in his eyes. He is Bren, and she knows him, and yet—

“Astrid,” Bren says again, when her silence stretches too long. The others surrounding them have gone silent, sentinel, their eyes on him. The monk is frowning; the goblin’s unnatural slitted eyes peer cold at Astrid from behind his leg.

Bren’s voice is softer than she remembers it to be. There is something raspy and quiet in it, something deadened. She does not know the look in his eyes. 

“It has been a long time,” Bren says. He takes a breath, and it looks like it hurts him. “Now. How did you find me?”

.

Training under Master Ikithon is different from training at the Academy. Harder, yes. Tougher. Painful— 

But it is necessary, Astrid knows. The endless testing, fighting, struggling… it is all necessary, and in its own way, it is flattering. Trent Ikithon does not coddle them. He does not treat them like children. He treats them like adults, like they are untempered weapons he must make strong, peasantry who will one day become legends. Magic in Astrid’s hands is a tool, in Eodwulf’s a song, in Bren’s a weapon. The magic they learn under Trent Ikithon is worth every second.

She knows this. She does. When she swallows down unknown potions and coughs up blood, Master Ikithon keeps a hand on her shoulder and tells her so. When she casts so many spells her voice withers, she closes her eyes and repeats it like a mantra in her head. When she breaks down and cries in the middle of the night, curled over the crystals in her arm, mourning the pain of the procedure and the healing and the way magic feels when forced through her veins, it is Bren who reminds her most of all. Bren, who sits down and bandages the wounds, and grips her wrist tight.

“I know it hurts,” he tells her then, hushed under the firelight. “But it’s necessary, you know? We can learn so much from this. We can gain so much more. He chose us for a reason, yes? Let us not prove our teacher wrong.”

The fire reflects bright in his eyes, glints off the crystals splintering through his own arm. When Astrid looks up, though, all she can see is his smile.

“I know,” Astrid says, and wipes away the tears with the back of her hand. The blood drips red down her wrist, and in the candlelight, the bloody crystals shine pale and bright.

“I know,” Astrid whispers, and tries with all her might to believe it. One day, she will be strong. One day, she will be enough.

One day, it won’t hurt at all.

“I know, Bren,” Astrid says, and finally smiles back.

.

He is speaking in Zemnian, and by the looks of the others, they do not understand him. She takes this in, and hope twists viciously in her chest. 

Astrid ignores his question, the dread on his face; her mind is whirling, now, pieces coming together faster than she can blink. “Bren,” she says finally, in the same language. He winces at the sound of his name and she feels near breathless at the confirmation. It is him. Is it—? “Bren, how are you _ here _?”

His eyelids flutter, the barest hint of breath hissed through his teeth. “I am not interested in playing games. How did you—”

“Why are you here?” Astrid presses, cutting him off. “Master Ikithon—he said you were in an asylum, you were being cared for, how—” A thought occurs to her. “Are you healed? Have you returned to us? Has Master Ikithon asked this of you?” She would not put it past her teacher, to let them know of Bren’s recovery in such a way, to put Bren on a mission and send them colliding unknowingly into each other. Her heart lifts with sudden hope. The others do not understand Zemnian, and if she is right, then perhaps… “Are you—”

The words catch in her throat before she can finish. The look on Bren’s face—it is indescribable. White-knuckled, wide-eyed, tight and cold. Not quite fear, not quite anger, not quite hate. She does not know what it is, but she knows what it means.

“…Ah,” Astrid says, and her throat closes up, stones weighing in her gut. She has never felt so cold. The missive in her pocket burns like dry ice, the inked orders like a branding, searing through cloth unto her skin. 

The Mighty Nein, a nuisance to the Empire. The Mighty Nein, a threat. An ally to Xhorhas. 

Traitors.

“Bren,” Astrid says, and she has never felt so cold, so distant, so terribly gutted—“Bren, why are you here?”

.

Three months into their training, the first traitor comes in. 

He is a man—human, small, thin and weedy. His eyes dart to and fro between their faces, a beady blue color, pale and insincere. His skin is white against his scraggly dark hair, against the bloodstained cloth gagging his mouth. There is a hole in his stomach, blood slowly soaking his tunic. He is chained in the field outside of the home where they train, left out on the flowers to bleed out and die.

He is a murderer, Master Ikithon tells them, when they walk outside. A spy, a fool, a disgusting liar who sold out their soldiers for gold. He is a man who seeks to send their great Empire falling to the ground.

They stand there, the three of them. Astrid, waiting; Eodwulf, unsure; Bren, silent and still. Master Ikithon lists the man’s crimes and then he steps away, steps aside. He does not tell them what to do. He does not tell them what they are here for. He does not need to.

Bren steps up first, but Astrid is right behind him.

Her hands shake, after the deed. Her hands shake, but this is for the Empire, this is necessary and needed and _ right, _and she is strong enough for this, she is good enough, she is enough. She wants this. She has never wanted anything more.

The next time the traitors are brought in, Astrid does not hesitate.

.

“I am asking the questions,” Bren says, but he speaks stilted, as if forcing the words through his teeth. His skin is almost colorless. His teeth are grit. His hands are clenched into fists by his sides, but his face is pale, almost sickly. The goblin holds at his wrist, and he doesn’t react in the slightest.

Astrid sits up straight in her chair. “You’re with them?” She is stunned at the thought, the possibility like a slap to her face. “With—” Bren, the best of them; Bren, loyal to a fault. The Bren she remembers would never— “They are traitors to the Empire!”

“Stop,” Bren snaps. “Stop, stop talking, you do not—” He makes a sudden noise in the back of his throat, sharp and terrible. The goblin tugs at his wrist and hisses another question in Common; this time, he shakes it off. “No,” he says in Common, “Stop, I am fine, I am—” He shakes his head, turns back to Astrid, his Zemnian clipped and hurried. “I—I am asking the questions here. Astrid, how did you—”

“You are running,” Astrid realizes. The way the group clusters around him, his earlier comments on _ finding _ , the way he shifts on his feet: the understanding leaves her cold. “You are running—from us? The Empire? Master Ikithon?” She cannot fathom it. “Bren, _ why? _ What has happened to you? Why are you here? _ ” _

Bren has gone still. His fidgeting silenced, his face slack and cold. He is breathing hard, gasping, as if running out of air. He says nothing.

“Bren,” Astrid says. The sound of his name is strange on her tongue, an old habit worn nearly to nothing from disuse. Horror twists like a snake in her belly, rising like bile in her throat, beginning to boil into a fury. Outrage chokes her. She has known, always, that Bren was broken. That he was not as strong as she always wanted to believe, that he was—not _ weak, _maybe, but just… not enough. Not enough. She knows that. After all these years, she has accepted that.

But she has never once dreamed that Bren would become a coward.

“Bren,” Astrid repeats, and behind her back, encircled in iron, her fingers clench into fists. “What have you done?”

.

The months pass by, training and studying and fighting—learning how to survive, how to excel, how best to silence a wandering tongue and the quickest way to execute those that need to die. Bren is the best of them, the most driven, the last to hesitate— but Astrid is forever close behind, and Eodwulf never far off.

The months pass, and their training comes to a close. Her arms scar over and her magic blooms brighter than ever. And then, three weeks off from their projected graduation, Trent Ikithon sends them home.

“Your duties will carry you far,” he says, as they leave him. “See your family while you still have the time, my students.”

They are grateful, all three of them. Delighted at the respite, at the gift of homecoming, at their budding success. They go home with smiles on their faces.

They return different people.

.

“_ Done?” _ Bren echoes. He laughs, short and ragged, and there is nothing kind in the sound. “You—you don’t understand.” His words don’t rise but they bite, in a way that is alien to her. The Bren she once knew would not speak like this. The Bren she once knew— 

She searches his face, but this time the action is cold, cynical. She is trying to find betrayal there, trying to see the fear of all traitors in his eyes. Inside, she is screaming. 

Bren doesn’t seem to notice—he is breathing hard, his whole jaw clenched tight. He closes his eyes and inhales through his teeth. “No,” he says, and his voice is quiet again, smothered in his throat. “No, no, I don’t want— this— Astrid. _ Astrid.” _ He opens his eyes. “And Eodwulf, too, I—I did not expect to find you here. Either of you. Here.” His breathing is funny. “I can… explain. Later. Just, please. _ Please. _ Tell me how you found me.”

But he is too late; the first shock of recognition has finally faded into reason, and Astrid can see past the nostalgia blinding her eyes. “Why?” she asks, and does not mean to make it snap—but it does, anyway, and something in Bren’s face goes cold at the sound of it. “So you can know how to avoid us, next time? So you can know whether Master Ikithon is tracking you down?” 

He stares at her. “You don’t understand,” he says, again. And the worst part is—this, _ this _ is almost familiar to her. The insistence. The _ knowing. _ The certainty in his voice. Bren as she used to know him, the leader, the one who had all the answers. But now his voice stutters, and his words catch, stumbling and unsure. “You don’t—understand. I cannot go back.”

Astrid shakes her head so hard her hair hits her face. “Listen to yourself. What has happened to you? Whatever it is, it is not too late. If… you are here. You can redeem yourself, I know it, if you just speak to Master Ikithon— ” 

“I will not go back.” The stutter has fled. Bren’s voice cracks, not with pain or fear, but with an icy hatred that stuns her. A disgust that is more than skin-deep. “I am never going back. I never want to be that person again.”

She doesn’t know what to do. Her head is pounding and her heart is like a drum in her chest. This is a group of traitors, but Bren—Bren is here, and yet, the things he says—

She doesn’t know what to do, and all she can manage is a question. “What,” says Astrid, “are you _ talking _about?”

.

They conspire the very evening of their return— Astrid, the first to offer her findings, and the others quickly following suit. Bren had heard his parents speaking in the dead of night; Astrid at the door, receiving a letter; Eodwulf in the fields, walking home.

Her heart is like a lead weight in her chest. Her mouth is numb. She does not—she cannot describe it, the twist in her gut, the feeling she sees reflected in their faces. Shame, perhaps. The sharp acidic bite of betrayal, because these are her _ parents, _her parents, and everything she has done she did it for them, and they dare—

“Is it just them?” Eodwulf asks, “or the whole town, maybe—” but Bren is shaking his head. 

“They are colluding, I think,” he says, and there is something bitter in his tone, something deadened and disappointed. “After we left the Academy to train with Master Ikithon—it must have been then. Our parents all probably sought comfort together, and then… but they are alone in the town with their—_ sentiments _.” He almost spits the word. “They were looking for more allies.”

Astrid shifts. “I heard them over a letter—they might be sending news out already.”

“But,” Eodwulf says. “If they need people… allies… what are they planning to do?”

At this, Astrid is quiet. Bren doesn’t answer. For the first time in a long time, they hesitate.

For three days they remain this way, silent and unsure. Bren pushes for the axe—to tell Master Ikithon, to take care of it quietly, to do what they must. Eodwulf wavers, but the line of his mouth grows grimmer by the day. Astrid—waits. Considers. Thinks. Lets the news, and the implications, sink in. Lets her heart harden.

And then, two days before their graduation date, Master Ikithon summons them and congratulates them. Their skills are such that he trusts them to be ready. There will be no test. No final exam. From all he has seen this past year, he knows that they are enough.

“Hold your heads high, my students,” he says, and his colorless eyes are piercing in their pride. “For I know you have the will and the strength to do whatever it takes to keep our Empire safe.”

“Yes, Master Ikithon,” Astrid intones, and something settles in her chest. Bren’s pale eyes burn with certainty. Eodwulf looks grimly determined. She looks across and meets their eyes, and this time there is no question.

.

Bren looks near-feverish, his face pale. “You know,” he insists. “You must. We were… what we did… I know you know. Our training—”

She has no patience for his madness. “Our training was necessary.”

“—we tortured people. We killed them. We didn’t even need a reason, whoever they wanted us to kill and we _ did _ it, we wanted to—”

“Perhaps we started a little young, yes, but we learned so much. You, out of all of us—you were the one who said it most of all!” In the dead of night, in a quiet whisper, in a snapped reminder when Astrid was silly and stupid enough to feel resentment over the training, guilt over the deaths. “You always said it made us strong, and you were right.”

“I was wrong!” Bren shouts. His eyes are wild. Sparks flicker at his fingers. “I was—Astrid, Astrid, listen to me—he lied to us. Trent, he played us, our parents—your parents— ”

Her anger, her pity, turns ashy on her tongue. The reminder grits at her teeth. “_ Bren.” _

He falters, almost a flinch, but then his jaw tightens and he keeps speaking. “It changes nothing, in the end,” he says, and the words are rushed, heavy with loathing. “Because we wanted to do it, and we did it, but— Astrid, they were not traitors, you killed them for nothing. We killed them for nothing. The memories were false, he… Trent, he gave us the memories. He created a lie and then we executed it, like good little soldiers. I— it changes nothing. But you should know.” He stops, breathing hard. He opens his mouth like he has more to say but nothing comes, and his jaw snaps shut, his teeth clicking. The monk has a hand on his shoulder, now, steadying him, looking between them as if trying to decipher their conversation through expressions alone. The goblin is tugging hard at his wrist. 

Astrid stares at him. Bren stares back, and he... he is so much older, Bren. Not just in years, but in his eyes. There is an exhaustion there—a defeat—a desperation.

Astrid blinks, and lets his words sink in. And then she starts to laugh.

.

They do the deed one by one, without anyone else knowing. Eodwulf, then Astrid, then Bren. They wait by the road as Eodwulf walks home, the death silent and swift. They go to dinner with her parents and sit serenely as Astrid’s mother and father choke and foam at the mouth, slumping limp in their chairs. They push the cart in front of the door, and then Bren sets the old wood walls aflame.

They stand outside Bren’s burning house, and wait to hear the screams.

.

Astrid laughs. It is not a quick thing, not a broken thing, not mocking—a hiss through her teeth, a bark of humor, burning bitter in her throat. “Oh, Bren,” she whispers, and her heart aches in her chest. It should not feel like a betrayal, and yet—it should not feel like losing him again—

“Did they tell you that?” she asks, almost pitying, and Bren looks at her like she’s a stranger.

“W-what?” he says, but he is already shaking his head. His hands are trembling. “I—You—I am not _ joking, _Astrid, our parents—they were innocent—”

“They were traitors, Bren.”

“They were innocent and now they are _ dead _—” 

“They were _ traitors, _ Bren!” She wants to shake him; she settles for raising her voice. “Have you still not understood that, even after all this time?”

But Bren isn’t listening to her. “They were innocent,” he insists, and there is something feverish there, now, something almost like anger in his voice. He stops and starts, a broken record, as if he can’t settle on what he wants to say first. “I am not—how can you—and even if they _ weren’t _ —if they were traitors—and they were not, they were not, but even if… they didn’t deserve that. What we did to them. For us to want to kill them, for us to do it, how could we—how could _ you _—”

“I did it for the Empire,” Astrid snaps, furious. “I did it for my home_ , _ Bren—all of us, all three of us, we did it because it was _ right! _“

Bren stares at her. “We killed them,” he says, quiet. “We wanted to kill them. Our parents. Lovely, kind people, who raised us, who never hurt us, who loved us. It was—a despicable, awful, horrible deed. And we wanted to do it, and that is the worst part of it all.” His hands are shaking. “And you tell me you believe it was _ right _?”

She lifts her head and gives him a hard look. “It has nothing to do with belief. It needed to be done, and we did it.” She looks him dead in the eyes. “I am _ proud _ of it.”

And Bren goes still.

.

Bren sparks the flames, and the fire burns steady. It climbs up the walls, eats at the low roof, coils mercilessly at the doors and exits. The taste of smoke sits heavy in her throat, the smell ashy and thick. They stand at Bren’s back, her and Eodwulf both, and watch as the flames burn Bren’s past away at last. 

Astrid doesn’t move until she can hear the screams, and then she nods and turns away. She doesn’t smile, but there is a pale warmth in her chest, mingled with pity and lingering grief. It is terrible, what they’ve had to do here tonight. Terrible, but necessary. She wishes it had not come to this, that her parents had not made her do this, but she takes comfort in the deed. It is done, now. It is over. Everything has been set to rights.

She turns to walk away, Eodwulf by her side. The fire crackles, bright against the black night, and the screams rise. Astrid does not look back. By the time she realizes that Bren isn’t following, it will already be too late.

.

Bren is silent for a long time. Around them, the group shifts, whispers of concern and questions hissed over their heads. Bren doesn’t respond to them. He is looking only at Astrid, and the blue of his eyes is bright and empty. 

“I see,” he says finally, and there is something—off, now, about him. A blankness, a deadness to him, that she cannot place. Something shattered behind the eyes. “Well, then. You were right, I suppose. It has been a long time, Astrid. So long. We have much to catch up on, don’t we?”

He does not say it like a question, like he wants to know; in his voice, in his words, it is an accusation. It would almost be biting if not for the tremble she can still see in his hands. “All these years,” Bren says, and he almost spits the words, his eyes flashing. “All these years, Astrid, how have you and Eodwulf been? What have you been doing? What sort of killings does the King send his Vollstrecker to commit, what sort of horrors?” 

“Necessary things,” Astrid says. “Righteous things.” Her hands feel numb. “Are you a traitor, Bren?”

“Have you seen Xhorhas? With your own eyes?”

“Have you sided with the monster, Bren? With those things?”

“They are people. There are good people there. And in the Empire. And—everywhere, everywhere, there are good people, if you look. Astrid—Astrid, my friend, what have you been doing?”

“Have you betrayed us, Bren,” she says, and he shakes his head and steps away from her. 

“No,” Bren says. “No. No. My friend—but you aren’t, are you? You are me. You are what I could have become but—you _ are, _you are— you have become this. The both of you—Eodwulf—you have become this. The product of our teacher’s lessons.” 

“Bren—”

But he has closed his eyes to her, and his hands grip his hair, pull tight at the strands. “Do not call me that,” Bren says, and when he looks at her, his eyes have gone wild. “Do not… I don’t know you. I don’t _ know _you.”

“Bren,” she snaps, but when she meets his eyes it’s like looking at a stranger.

“I was wrong,” Bren whispers, finally, and something has gone cold and ashy in his face, in his eyes. “I was wrong, you cannot be—you are the same monsters as I but I finally understand—I finally understand.” 

The light in his eyes is terrible and bright. “At least I know the kind of monster I am,” Bren tells her, and lifts a hand towards her face. “But you—you don’t know at all.” There are voices around them, rising, arguing. Hands pulling at his coat, trying to pull him back, pull him away—but Bren’s eyes are fixed on her, and his hand is steady. At his fingertips, fire sparks.

“Astrid,” Bren repeats. “I always wondered. That day, when we killed them… when we went home, and murdered our families in their beds… I broke that day. I did. And I’ve always wondered.”

His face is white, but his eyes are cold and certain. There is no mercy there. No give. And it is, strangely, the only time in this whole messy reunion, when she can finally see the boy she once knew in his face.

“I murdered my family and it broke me, Astrid,” Bren says, and the look on his face is _ terrible _. “And I wonder— why didn’t it break you, too?”

_ . _

  


_ . _

  


_ . _

  


_ “Bren?” Astrid asks, and turns back to look at him. He has not moved. He does not look at her, and he does not answer. _

_ Bren is staring at the burning house, the firelight silhouetting him in shadow. He is trembling from head to toe. His hands have risen to his head. He covers his face. _

_ “…Bren?” _

_ She can hear him breathing, raspy and hard, as if he’s running out of air. He is shaking so hard she can see it—the tremor in his hands, in his arms, in him. There is a quiet, gasping hiss through his teeth, words cut short. _

_ Inside the house, the screaming echoes. Bren lunges for the door. _

_ They catch him, of course. They grab his arms and drag him away, because what on earth does Bren think he’s doing? And he is silent, then, he is silent until they touch him, until they drag him back, and then he starts to cry, quiet and wordless. His eyes are empty. He pulls against their hands, and then he starts to scream. _

_ Astrid thinks it a weakness, then. She thinks it a faltering. She thinks it a momentary loss of composure, and as she pins him to the ground she grits her teeth and hopes, with a furious secondhand shame at his failing, that he’ll pull himself together by the morning. _

_ The screams inside the house go silent. _

_ Bren never stops. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Astrid, currently concussed and emotionally compromised: how do I deal with this  
Caleb, panicked, just woke up three minutes ago and trying not to hyperventilate: HOW DO I DEAL WITH THIS  
The Mighty Nein, VERY confused, watching all this go down: holy FUCK why did we let them talk
> 
> (Sleep lasts like a minute as a spell, so basically, Caleb got hit with two awful reunions and then had to face his past head-on while surrounded by a group of people he actually likes asking him questions he doesn’t want to answer, and got only like. Thirty seconds to panic and then had to pull himself together. So, you know. He's understandably in a bad headspace right now.)
> 
> Also, some observations: I really am fond of stories where Astrid and Eodwulf get redeemed, but... I don't think it'll ever be so easy as telling them the truth. Caleb considers killing his parents to be the most despicable act he’s ever committed. While I’m pretty sure he hates a lot of other choices made under Trent's instruction as well, THAT act is the catalyst to him. When Caleb puts such importance—such meaning—on a terrible action… what is he to do with someone who has done the same act—the same awful deed… but felt nothing? Astrid and Eodwulf killed their parents and walked away. Learning their parents weren't actually traitors might startle them, but it won't be enough to change their minds.
> 
> In this fic, at least, I think in many ways the hardest thing Caleb is struggling with is this question: why didn’t Astrid and Eodwulf falter? How could they have killed those loving parents and not been affected by it? His memories of them are fond, but I think in his heart of hearts, Caleb struggles with the fact that his once-dear friends have become—or perhaps always were—cruel people.
> 
> Anyways, that's just my take on things. [If you wanna rec this fic, you can reblog it here!!](https://izaswritings.tumblr.com/post/187107113237/title-the-cruel-unbreaking-synopsis-some) Also, if you have any questions or just want to talk, [my tumblr](http://izaswritings.tumblr.com) is always open. 
> 
> Any thoughts?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fallout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like looking at out-of-context spoilers for future episodes I've yet to see. Yesterday's were WILD. I love that Caleb's main priorities are apparently bread. It's so lovely. (Also, Beau. Just Beau. What a legend.)
> 
> **Warning:** This chapter deals with a majority of Caleb’s backstory during the early days of the asylum. In general, there is a pretty poor handling of mental health issues all around, because Ikithon is a terrible person and, unfortunately, a lot of his thinking has been taken up by Astrid as well. (For a similar reason, there is also the dehumanization and the usual disgust people tend to direct towards Nott/goblins in general, as this is in Astrid’s pov, and her worldview is kind of... horrible.) So please, watch out for that! Also, if there's anything else you feel I should mention, let me know and I'll add it on here!
> 
> That said, I hope you enjoy!

It’s a slap to the face, a shock of icy water doused over her head. Astrid opens her mouth to speak and finds herself voiceless. 

Bren is not moving. His eyes are cold, blank and dead and numbly determined. He waits for her answer, and when she doesn’t give it, he shakes. His lips peel back from his teeth in a snarl. “No? Come _ on, _ Astrid! Answer me!” 

His shout makes her flinch— snaps her out of memories, out of echoes, of the distant screaming rising in the back of her mind. The taste of poisoned wine sits heavy on her tongue, nevermind that she never drank it. “What do you want from me?” she manages, at last. She’s not shouting, but she’s close: unbalanced, thrown off track, a tremor in her voice. “What does that even mean?”

“They were your parents!” Bren snaps. “Didn’t you love them? Didn’t you  _ care?” _

She stutters and chokes, losing words in the blind fury. Her vision goes red. “Of course I did!”

“Then why did you kill them!”

“Because they were—” 

“You sat there!” Bren shouts. “ _ Gods,  _ we all just fucking  _ sat _ there, and watched you do it, just watched, and then we went to my house and I—I—but  _ you!”  _ His fingers curl like claws in the air. “You didn’t even—even flinch. You didn’t even cry. You just walked away. And I thought you were  _ strong _ for it.” She goes to speak and he shakes his head. “I know what you will say.” He sounds bitter, and the words are tense and tight. His eyes lift and catch on hers. Bright and broken like glass. “It was right. We all thought it was right. But I have changed my mind, Astrid, even if you haven’t.” 

“Whether I cared or not doesn’t matter,” Astrid says, and struggles to keep her voice even. “Emotion has— has no place in— in doing what needs to be done.” She meets his eyes, trying to read his expression. He had believed this once. He’d lived and breathed this lesson the same as her. “Mercy, emotion, hesitation— it is weakness, all of it, and in the face of what we achieve it is  _ nothing. _ ”

That brief, searing anger has faded from his face. Bren’s eyes are glassy and calm. He rocks back on his heels and his head drops forward in a nod. “I see,” he says, soft, ashy. “I see. So your parents are nothing to you. And in that case, neither am I. I see.”

“Bren—” she starts, but he doesn’t let her finish. 

“Take heart,” Bren whispers. He looks up. His tone is low, even and calm, but something in his voice silences Astrid regardless. “Old friend.”

His hand lifts towards her face. Fire curls around his hand. Bright and golden, ruby red. It dances on his fingertips and the heat washes over her face. Her eyes go wide. She pulls, ineffectively, at the chains.

Because Bren is shaking, yes. But his eyes, when he looks at her, are cold and resigned. And Astrid knows, with sudden and stone-cold certainty, that he will not miss.

“I am doing this,” Bren tells her, “because it is right, too.”

.

She spends the first three days after the fire in a fitful daze, jittery and impatient. She paces up and down the halls, opens books and does not read them, sits with Eodwulf in silence as their Master works. They had returned to find him waiting for them, somehow aware of their parents’ betrayal and their reactions to it, smiling proud at their loyalty—and watched that smile flicker and fade. Astrid and Eodwulf have succeeded. They have done what they must, and stayed strong through it all. But Bren— 

Bren, who has broken. Bren, who has gone silent and unresponsive in their hold. Bren, who has turned what should have been a reluctant yet necessary triumph into something ashy and tense.

The only reason Astrid still can't hear him screaming is because Master Ikithon has spelled the room silent.

So Astrid waits. She walks and frets and seethes, quiet, guilt and frustration alike a lump in her throat. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting for Bren to recover. Waiting for him to suck it up. She walks relentlessly up and down the hall, and thinks:  _ goddamn it, Bren, goddamn you.  _ The sense of shame, heavy on her tongue. The sting of betrayal, sharp in her chest. Weren’t you supposed to be better? Dear Bren, prideful Bren. Weren’t you supposed to be strong?

.

There is fire sparking at Bren’s hand and magic on his tongue, and around them, the group is shouting. Calling Bren a name Astrid doesn’t recognize, snapping their fingers in his face, but he is unresponsive and the fire is bright, bright,  _ burning—  _

The monk woman grabs Bren’s arm and wrenches it back just as the spell completes.

There’s a short scream, sharp and surprised and  _ angry,  _ and the world dissolves into a mess of light and sound and fire crackling by Astrid’s head. The aim of the spell goes wild— the earth by her head exploding into dust and heated shrapnel, the heat washing dry and merciless across her face. Her ears ring, her eyes blinking fast, momentarily blinded by the supernova flash. Still, despite it all: Bren’s voice rings loud and clear in her aching ears.

“Let me  _ go _ , Beauregard!”

The backlash of the spell slams Astrid back against the sword pinning her down, and she can feel the blade shift in the dirt. The chains are tight on her wrists—the sword, however, is not. There is fire lapping at her hair and a buzz rising in her mind, and she turns around and tears, vicious, at the sword, dragging manacled arms up against the edge with an awful screech. 

She gets one loop of chain unlatched before a hand grips the sword hilt and shoves it back down into the ground. A man—a half-orc—looking harried and distracted but with a grim slant to his mouth as he looks at her, as if determined to keep her here. He reaches for the chains.

The world goes dim, broken down to the details. There is fire around her, and Bren is shouting, yelling, swearing. Echoes of memory and echoes of something else. The way her head still pounds, pain sharp through her skull. Eodwulf’s absence, his unconscious and wounded body waiting for her at the safehouse. Her missing spellbooks. A certainty, a knowledge that sits bitter on her tongue: Bren is going to kill her.

(A whisper in the back of her mind. Bren, her once-friend—a traitor, now; lost, now; a coward. If she faces him here, or even if she escapes from here, one day she will have to kill him too.)

She takes it all in with seconds to spare, and then she grips the blade of the sword, throws herself up, and drives the heel of her boot towards the half-orc’s skull.

.

A week passes. Then two. Master Ikithon leaves the house, and takes Bren with him. He returns alone, and when he steps through the door to see their worried faces, all he does is shake his head. His expression dark. The line of his mouth grim and disappointed. 

And as she watches Master Ikithon walk up the stairs, back bent and eyes gone cold, Astrid realizes she was wrong. This isn’t what she thought it was. This isn’t something small. This isn’t a tantrum. Bren isn’t getting over this. Bren isn’t getting better. Bren is—

Bren has been put in an asylum. Bren has been put away. 

Bren is  _ gone. _

And she realizes, for the first time, that she might not be getting Bren back after all.

.

She is not going to die here today, Astrid thinks. The taste of blood is cloying on her tongue. The buzz of her thoughts has gone quiet, focused. She is not going to die here, but someone else might.

She doesn’t get the half-orc in the temple like she intends—he pulls away just in time, and her kick catches him across the face instead. There’s a crack as his nose breaks, as the sole of her boot catches the flesh of his jaw, and he falls away from her with a shout. 

It’s enough.

Astrid pries her hands away from the biting edge of the sword and grips the hilt instead. Blood drips down her fingers, coating the leather straps of the sword an ugly red-brown. She wrenches the blade up from the earth and swings—

The half-orc yells, wordless, and the sword vanishes from existence, her hands empty. Astrid screams down at him, furious at the trick, and lashes out with her fists instead.

She can hear Bren distantly, just behind her, speaking in a language that is neither Zemnian nor Common. The air blisters and sparks. Magic.

She throws herself down and heat washes over her neck, so hot that her skin cracks and bleeds. She spits out dirt and pushes to her feet—sees the tiefling rushing for the half-orc—watches as the firbolg pins Bren down, looking frazzled—

—turns on her heel, and runs.

.

She visits him as soon as she is able, as soon as Master Ikithon lets her. Marches through the asylum’s dimly lit halls with her heart in her throat and her hands clenched tight into fists. Hearing the screams, seeing the other patients weep, catching the pitying glances and knowing sneers on the healers’ faces. Bren doesn’t belong here, she thinks. Bren is better than this place. 

When she opens the door, the skin on her hand is crawling.

It is the first time she has seen Bren since the night of the fire, but it won’t be the last. Day after day, visit after visit, Astrid will walk these halls and open this door and sit there by his side. Talking, yelling, pleading— and getting nothing in return, no matter how hard she tries.

She hates it. She hates every part of it. Most of all she hates how—how  _ useless _ she feels, reduced to sitting in a chair by his bedside and speaking softly in the hopes he will answer her. It makes her feel weak, makes him  _ look _ weak, and—and why  _ now,  _ what does Bren think he’s  _ doing,  _ doing this to them only days away from their greatest goal? What does he think he’s doing, leaving them behind?

“Bren,” she says, over and over. “Bren, look at me. Bren,  _ talk _ to me. What is this? Wake up and come back. Master Ikithon will understand. He’ll forgive you. Come  _ back _ , Bren, you don’t get to—to leave us now, we’re so close, you  _ asshole,  _ what do you think you’re—”

He never answers. Just stares, blank, at the ceiling, his eyes empty and his expression vacant. Some days, when he’s present enough to react, he hisses under his breath, mumbled nonsense. On the worst days, he covers his face and shakes. 

Once, this enrages her. Once, she slams her hand by his bedside and snaps, “Stop acting like a child! You were the one who said we had to do it! You were the first to suggest it! You didn’t even hesitate!” Her voice cracks. She grabs his shoulders and shakes him, hard, resisting the urge to hit him across the face. “So why are you breaking  _ now,  _ Bren?”

His hand comes up, covers her wrist. His fingers are thin, shaking. His hand, cold.

Astrid stills.

“Let go,” Bren whispers, then. The first time he ever speaks to her. “Let go, let me go, don’t  _ touch _ me—”

There is fear in his eyes, but there is something else, too. Something worse. Something dark and angry and hateful, that looks at her and finds her wanting.

She drops him like she’s been burned, steps back. “I— I didn’t mean—”

But whatever that flash of clarity, it is gone as quick as it came. Bren doesn’t reply. Just reaches up and covers his ears and grits his teeth. Shakes, small, on the bed, and his eyes stare right through her.

“Bren,” Astrid says. “Bren,” she snaps. “Bren!” she shouts, but he doesn’t look at her, and he never answers again. Day after day after day, mute and vacant staring, as if seeing a ghost. 

She doesn’t see him again for a long time, after that. She doesn’t really want to.

.

Astrid runs.

Her heart is pounding, her head aching, the world transformed into a mess of swirling colors and sound—but logic is cool and cold in the back of her mind, rational despite the chaos. Astrid is on the defensive here. Her spellbooks have been taken or destroyed, her hands chained, her head wounded. Eodwulf is still injured, and still waiting on her. There are six of them and one of her, and in this moment, in this battle, she is outnumbered. She cannot fight them. If she fights them here and now, she will die, and she is too valuable an asset to die during a paltry side mission such as this.

And so: Astrid tries to run. 

Tries, because her head still aches and the world is spinning. Tries, because despite her best efforts, she can still hear him screaming— Bren, his voice high and hysterical, almost pleading but mostly angry, crying out, “Please, let me go, I need to—I  _ have _ to, Nott, I must, we can’t take her prisoner and if we can’t take her prisoner then she’ll kill us, I have to—I have to— _ let me do this— _ ”

_ Pathetic,  _ some part of her whispers, and Astrid doesn’t look back. Her heart has seized in her chest. Her throat, closed up. In the back of her mind, the knowledge beats like a mantra.  _ Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.  _ Dearest Bren, her first friend, once so proud and now brought so low.

(A whispering in her ears. A voice worn away to nothing, but never forgotten, not really. Bren’s laughter, high and soft.  _ But Azzy,  _ he says, that ghost from her memories,  _ isn’t that why you’re running? Because if you stay that means you’ll have to try and kill me too.) _

“Shut up,” Astrid whispers. “Shut up. Shut up.” She ducks another blast of fire and stumbles. Her feet catch on the rocks. She goes down. “No—!”

A hand latches around her middle and hoists her up. Blue cloth, dark skin. A voice, gruff and furious, says from above her head: “For fuck’s sake, Caleb, goddamn, fuck! Fjord, keep him busy!”

The monk.

Astrid struggles at once, and the arm tightens around her waist. Her chained hands swing uselessly before her. “Screw you, calm down,” says the monk, to Astrid, and the venom in her voice is unmistakable. “Attacking us at five-fucking-am, gods, you’re exactly what I thought you’d be like. Better be  _ fucking _ grateful about this.”

And then—impossibly, bizarrely, incomprehensibly— the monk runs off. 

Away from the campground. Away from the fire, and smoke, and yelling. Away from Bren.

She runs away, and drags Astrid with her.

.

Eodwulf corners her one day, a flush to his cheeks and anger in his eyes. His hands twist on the fringe of his new uniform. He says, “You haven’t been visiting him.”

There is no need to ask who he means. The words make her still. “Did—did he tell—”

“No,” Eodwulf snaps. His voice is thin, shaky. “I asked the healers.”

“Oh.” Disappointment weighs in her gut, sits bitter on her tongue. She swallows it back and scowls. “I’m busy,” she says, but even as she says it she can feel shame bloom hot and tight in her chest. She is not too busy to visit Bren. She simply doesn’t want to.

Eodwulf’s face tightens, and she knows he has read the truth in-between the lines. “I hate this,” he whispers. “You—and everyone—e-even Master Ikithon—”

“Eodwulf!”

His face is red. “You all act like he’s— He’s not  _ gone _ . He’s not  _ dead.” _

Her jaw tightens, but the anger outweighs her guilt. “He might as well be.” The way he stares, the way he flinches from her, the fury in his voice when he told her to go away. “Maybe it’d be better that way, because no, instead he’s just weak and he left us and—”

“Shut up,” Eodwulf says. The flush has faded from his face; he’s gone white. “Don’t you dare—”

“We both heard Master Ikithon.” She grits her teeth. “He’s  _ weak.  _ Was weak.”

“He’s Bren,” Eodwulf hisses back. There is a brightness to his eyes and she hates it, hates it, hates it. Hasn’t he already learned what tears will get them? Where weakness and hesitation lead? “He’s our friend, and now you’re talking like he’s already dead!”

“He’s weak,” Astrid repeats, coldly. There is no give in her voice, there is no argument against it. Master Ikithon had said so himself.

Eodwulf flinches. “Maybe,” he admits, at last, in a whisper. “But we must have… We missed something. That night. We missed something. We must have.” Eodwulf swallows hard. “He’s  _ Bren.” _

Unspoken between them: this is Bren. Proud, confident, unfaltering Bren. 

Once upon a time, she had thought them unbreakable. 

To this, Astrid has nothing to say. She curls her hands into fists and looks at the ground until Eodwulf leaves, and wonders why, even now, it still hurts.

.

When they finally stop running, Astrid is breathless and the monk is wheezing faintly. The sun has risen fully, by now, and light dapples golden through the trees. The woods are silent. Everything is silent. She cannot smell smoke, or taste the flames, but the echo of heat still sears against her skin.

More pressing, however, is this.  _ “Why?” _ Astrid asks, and it’s almost a shout. She is furious, confused, wrung raw and thin. “Why did you—?”

“Shut up,” says the monk. She yanks on the chains at Astrid’s wrists and binds them tight to a tree, ignoring the way Astrid fights her grip. When Astrid yanks hard at the manacles, the metal holds fast.

She bites back a snarl and pulls herself tall. “You don’t get to—”

“ _ Shut up, _ ” says the monk, and her tone is ice. “Shut the fuck up. I didn’t do it for you. World would probably be better off without you, if I’m guessing everything right.” She kicks at a log and the wood shatters under the force of the blow. “Fuck!”

The show of power, however unintentional, only makes Astrid falter for a second. Then she firms. “Then  _ why _ —”

“Fuck off,” says the monk, cutting her off again. “You’re a trash person. I’m telling you this, because I’m pretty sure you’re under the delusion that you’re, like, not? And from one trash person to another: you are the  _ worst.”  _ Her voice is heated, her hands clenched. She is staring off into the trees, not even bothering to meet Astrid’s eyes. “The absolute worst, but he was  _ fucking _ right, we can’t take or keep you prisoner. Don’t have the resources, and your buddy can probably track us—bad idea all around.”

Astrid has been reading between the lines, in writing and in words, for over sixteen years. The pieces come together. “You took me—because—because Bren would have killed me?” She doesn’t understand. 

The monk turns to look at her. Her eyes are blue, Astrid realizes— as blue as the flowers that used to grow by her hometown, bright and burning. She’s a slim fighter, this monk, violence in her hands and not much else, but something in the way she stares Astrid down almost makes Astrid forget the sheer difference of power between them. How easily Astrid could strike this woman down, if she still had her spellbooks. How easily she could break her.

But here, in this forest, with ash on her skin and her hands still shaking—with the monk’s steady, hateful gaze, and the silence around them, the sunlight through thin leaves—in this moment, the monk seems utterly in control.

“I don’t give a shit about what happens to you,” she says, blunt and cold like a blade. “You getting away is gonna bite us bad, but if I let that  _ fucking  _ idiot force himself to kill you, it’s gonna be a goddamn shitshow. So.” Her eyes flicker away, back to the trees.

Astrid tries to parse through that. Her eyes narrow. “So…  _ you _ will kill me.”

“What?” The monk scowls back at her. “No. Not yet, anyway. Are you joking? That’s almost worse, can you imagine? The fucking fallout from that,  _ ugh,  _ I’m not dealing with that. God, just shut up already.”

Astrid grits her teeth. Her head is spinning. The chains drag down at her arms. “Then what—”

But the monk isn’t looking at her anymore. She steps forward, close to the trees, and says, “Nott. There you are. What’s happening?”

Astrid’s head whips around. From the shadows, the goblin steps forward.

.

Time passes. She gets her first assignment, and the job completes with little mishap. Her heart soars, but the victory is sour. Bren’s absence is like a hole. After, she goes to visit him, driven by guilt and Eodwulf’s glare boring into her back.

This time, when she sits by Bren’s side, she ignores the stare and speaks anyway. Speaks of the mission, of her success, trying to detail it in vivid and exciting description.  _ Remember this?  _ she wants to say.  _ Remember how proud you were? To serve, to fight, to do the things no one else could? I am doing these things now, Bren. You can do them too. Come back. _

Her story gains her nothing but silence, a shudder behind Bren’s eyes. No words. No response. Just his breathing, pale and hoarse, and his face turned away, as if trying to escape her.

She leaves with her heart in her throat, the victory gone cold in her memory.

.

“What is  _ that, _ ” Astrid says, and the goblin looks at her with cold yellow eyes and sneers. It is small, hunched, with stringy dark hair and a cloak pulled low over its head. A crossbow is hooked on its belt. It doesn’t answer her—just turns, dismissively, to look at the monk instead.

“Fjord’s got him,” it says, quiet and seething. “Didn’t go over well. Caduceus put him to sleep.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.” The goblin’s eyes flicker to Astrid. Its mouth twists, sharp teeth bared like a threat. “So.  _ You’re _ Astrid?”

She glares right back, refusing to show her discomfort. This thing, this creature—the way it looks down at her, despite being so much smaller, so much less, makes her skin crawl. She says nothing.

For the goblin, it seems her silence is confirmation enough. It grimaces, and looks away, as if to compose itself. It takes a deep breath, and then looks up and meets her eyes with a stare as cold as ice. “You’re leaving.”

She does not take orders from anyone but the King and her teacher, and for a moment Astrid forgets herself. Her lip curls. “I—”

“You’re leaving,” says the goblin. Its voice is high, thin and reedy—and flat, blank with certainty, with a threat. It reaches down and unlatches the crossbow from its belt, checks the dart. It’s yellow eyes track Astrid’s every movement. “You’re leaving, or I’m killing you.”

Even the monk startles at this. “Nott—” 

“Go away,” the goblin tells Astrid, ignoring the other. “Go away. Don’t come back. If you come back, if you hurt us— _ him _ —again, you’ll regret it. I’ll make you regret it.” There is a crossbow clenched in one hand, and conviction in its eyes. A stone-cold certainty. A promise with all the weight and presence of a prophecy.

“Go on,  _ Astrid, _ ” says the goblin, and points the crossbow at her chest. “It’s time for you to start running.”

It is a goblin, nothing more, and yet—she feels pinned. She feels cold. She doesn’t move. 

A moment of hesitation, and then the monk walks over, tugs at the chains. They unravel limp from the tree, left to dangle loose and heavy from Astrid’s wrists. She watches, silent, as the monk moves away to guard the goblin’s back. Stares mutely at the goblin’s unwavering threat.

It doesn’t matter, suddenly, that this has been Astrid’s intention all along—to run away and grab Eodwulf and recover until she knows what to do. It doesn’t matter that this is the perfect opportunity, the best result, a stroke of luck. It doesn’t matter that she gets away alive, because Astrid can taste ashes in her mouth and knows that this is not a victory. This is a loss. This is  _ mercy,  _ from traitors, and she is—she is—!

(A whisper, in the back of her mind. A voice she has never quite forgotten. Her first friend.  _ Astrid,  _ he whispers.  _ Azzy. Do you want to kill me, my friend?  _

The taste of poisoned wine, filling her mouth like bile. _ ) _

She swallows hard and straightens up. Her vision swims. Her head aches. She has never felt so hollow.

She says nothing. Just stands, as tall as the chains allow her, and walks away. Back to the woods. Back to Eodwulf. Back to her life.

Behind her, the goblin and her crossbow. The monk and her heated words, the hate in her eyes. The smoke, and the ash—and Bren.

Astrid does not look back.

.

She goes back to visit him. Nothing ever changes. On her last and final visit, she runs back breathless, trembling from head to toe. Master Ikithon looks down at her, and says nothing at all. 

Three days later, she asks if she can visit again. It is three months after everything, three months from the day Astrid stepped up into her destiny and Bren broke under the weight, and Master Ikithon looks her in the eyes and tells her  _ no. _

_ No, my student. You cannot see him. _

And Astrid steps away. Her hands shaking, her eyes tight with tears. Her throat closed up. She does not ask about Bren again—

— and pretends, desperately, that this feeling in her chest is not relief.

.

By the time she reaches the safehouse, Eodwulf is awake. She finds him halfway out the door, and takes his hands and sinks to the ground with him, near-deaf to his babbling. “Bren—” he is saying, rushed and fearful, his eyes wide. “Bren—he was—Astrid, was he, did you—”

“It wasn’t him,” she whispers. The words feel like ash. Her head feels stuffed full of cotton. “Wulf, it wasn’t him.”

“He—but I, I saw him, I—”

His panic is familiar to her, but her own has long since died, beaten down and turned cold by the truth. She shakes her head. “No,” she says. She thinks of Bren’s blank eyes, blue and cold. The way his hands shook, the way his shoulders hunched. The goblin and the monk and all the others, the Mighty Nein, the way they clustered around him. Not like followers around a leader, but like friends. As if he was one of them—the Mighty Nein, a nuisance, traitors to the Empire.

Eodwulf’s eyes are bright and frantic, and Astrid touches his face. 

“It wasn’t him,” she says. He tries to speak and she shushes him. “It wasn’t him. Just a trick of the light. A nasty, cruel trick. It wasn’t him. Come on, Wulf. Let’s go home.”

She can afford to fail one mission. She can afford to think about this. And as she takes Eodwulf’s limp hand in hers, and leads him back through the safe house, back through the teleportation circle, back through to Rexxentrum—

“It wasn’t him,” she says, and wonders why it still hurts.

.

.

.

_ She doesn’t know, when she arrives, that this will be her final visit. That this will be the last time she sees him. She doesn’t know, when she closes the door, that after she leaves this room, it will be sixteen long years before she ever says his name again.  _

_ What she does know is that she is angry. When she sees his blank, staring eyes, she is furious. “Bren,” she says that day. “Bren, killing them was the right thing to do.”  _

_ He doesn’t respond. She takes his hand. “Talk to me,” she says, and it’s not so much a plea as it is an order, a snarl. “Talk to me! Wulf says—he says we missed something, that there must be a reason—Bren, please, just tell me what it is!” She grips his limp hand and squeezes so hard his bones creak. “Tell me so I can fix it. So I can fix you. I’ve always been so good at fixing things, remember? Let me fix this.” _

_ He doesn’t answer. Her face twists.  _

_ “Fine,” she says, but when she turns to leave, a hand grips her wrist. _

_ She nearly jumps. Bren. It is Bren. His hand, tight around her arm, bruising force. His eyes, blank and staring right through her. Paler than he should be, and shaking under his skin.  _

_ “Bren?” _

_ Bren stares at her. It is not awareness in his eyes, not really—not understanding, or warmth. His hand tightens around her wrist, and it hurts.  _

_ “Bren!” She ignores the pain, and forces a smile. Please, let this time be different. Please, let him hear her. “Are you—” _

_ “Why didn’t you break?” _

_ The smile drops from her face. “…What?” _

_ “Why didn’t you break?” Bren repeats. He stutters on the words, falters, starts and stops. He sways on the bed. “Why… why didn’t you…” _

_ “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” _

_ His nails dig into her skin. His eyes fix on her, and for the first time, there is clarity there. Clarity, and knowing, and a hatred that stuns her silent. _

_ “Didn’t they matter?” Bren asks, and his voice is soft and his eyes are empty. “Didn’t you love them? So why not? Why didn’t you break? Why didn’t—why didn’t—why—” _

_ She rips away from his grip, short and sharp and violent. She is breathing hard, her blood pounding in her ears. She tries to speak, but nothing comes out.  _

_ “Why not?” Bren asks, and Astrid— she can’t stay here. She can’t, she can’t, she can’t stay here and  _ listen _ to this— she can’t—  _

_ Astrid turns and runs. _

_ She feels light-headed, heavy. Her tongue, weighed down by stone. Her stomach, filled with rocks, sharp and ragged edges. The taste of the last meal she made them, mealy meat and baked potatoes, red wine worth more than their lives, spiked by a poison they couldn’t taste.  _

_ Astrid runs, but even then, she can hear Bren muttering behind her, dazed and empty, mounting horror, asking the air over and over. “Why didn’t she break? Why didn’t they break? Why didn’t it matter?” _

_ She slams the asylum door shut behind her, and Bren’s voice cuts off.  _

_ For years, these words will chase at her heels. The echo rising in her ears. Over and over, Bren’s whispered plea kept alive in her memories.  _ Why not?  _ he asks, as she eats, as she sleeps, as she sets traitors and their families alight. Why not you? Why didn’t you break? Didn’t they matter, Astrid? Didn’t you love them? _

_ Why not?  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, after Caleb says he doesn’t remember much about his time in the asylum: its freeeeeeeee real estate
> 
> By which I mean: it's very plausible Astrid and Eodwulf visited him early on and Bren like. Willfully block the memory of that, if he was aware of it at all, because HOLYYY hell can you imagine having a very understandable mental breakdown over _murdering your parents_ and then having people come up and tell you you’re being dramatic??? That you should be proud about it instead?? That it was a good thing?? Good fucking bye. Bren was OUTTA there.
> 
> Astrid’s a complicated character for me. I think, especially after her training, after internalizing all these awful lessons, spoken and unspoken, from Trent, she struggles with kindness. This comes out a lot in her interactions with Bren, as her main feelings about Bren are loss and shame, rather than sympathy and care—as if, in breaking, he has let _her_ down. So while she likes the objective idea of being a good friend, and does care about him... ultimately, she does more harm than any good. Shitty emotions all around, basically. (Meanwhile, in not reacting to the murder of her family, Caleb’s currently kinda treating it as if she's betrayed HIM, so… yeah. These two are way too similar to each other, yet still somehow in opposing ways, and GOD, someone help them.)
> 
> I love Nott and Beau. LOVE them. I got second-hand fury over the way Astrid thinks about them, which was so weird. Anyway, they're the best. I'm really glad I got write some more stuff with them this chapter, and I'm really excited to have more in-depth scenes with them in the Caleb sequel-story. 
> 
> Anyways, we've got one chapter left!! Time to deal with the fallout, haha. 
> 
> [If you wanna rec this fic, you can reblog it here!!](https://izaswritings.tumblr.com/post/187222628352/title-the-cruel-unbreaking-synopsis-some) Also, if you have any questions or just want to talk, [my tumblr](http://izaswritings.tumblr.com) is always open!!
> 
> Any thoughts?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Astrid deals with the aftermath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter!!! I can't believe I'm here already, good god. I rarely ever write things this fast. (Also, Critical Role watch update: I've reached episode 26 and I'm.... I'm not ready....)
> 
> **Warnings:** This chapter deals again with the asylum, and more generally with the medieval view and treatment of people with mental health issues. Which is to say, it's terrible. Please be warned that there is a pretty poor handling of mental health issues all around, some explicitly ableist language and views expressed by Astrid and others, and other such awful stuff in this chapter. Ikithon is a terrible person, and the people he employs aren't much better. Also, if there's anything else you feel I should mention, let me know and I'll add it on here!

****She returns home in the evening, her body aching, her hands numb. It is two weeks off from Harvest’s Close, and outside her window she can see people milling about in the streets of Rexxentrum, already preparing for the festivities. She has no new jobs, no new missions, and so she sits at her desk, the writing quill awkward in her hand as she looks at the blank paper that will become her report.

Only a day ago, she had dragged herself and Eodwulf through the teleportation circle, his body limp, his eyes empty. She had walked him home and touched his face, drawn his gaze to hers. She had told Eodwulf not to worry. Told him she would take care of it. Told him not to think about it anymore—but as she details their encounter on the page, her knuckles are white, her veins visible from tension. 

It takes her an hour to finish. To write one short, measly paragraph. The words curt, unfeeling, clipped. The ink dark against the crisp yellowed parchment. She sits in a high-backed, fancy chair, and looks at the report with unseeing eyes. Her neat handwriting and sharp signature, cold description of her encounter with the Mighty Nein. 

She spins the quill through her fingers, over and over. So many words, so _ much _ , and yet—she does not know how to write it. How to _ say _it. There is a group called the Mighty Nein, and they need to die, but Astrid and Eodwulf could not kill them, because—because—

Her fingers close. The quill snaps.

Astrid sits at her desk for a long time. Then she stands, and pulls on her cloak. The broken quill she tosses into a rubbish bin; the paper she folds, contemplative, between her fingers. She stands tall in the center of her cushy capital home, in her dirty boots and smoke-stinking cloak, and breathes. Just breathes. 

After a long moment, she looks back down at the unfinished report in her hands. Her eyes draw to the last line she wrote, the ink still wet and blotchy on the thin paper.

_ I found Bren. _

When she leaves, she closes the door secure behind her, with barely a sound. Barely a breeze. The papers on her desk rustle. The light from the fireplace wavers.

And deep in the firepit, out of sight from behind her locked door, the report smolders, blackens, and finally burns to ash.

.

She gets her new uniform the day after her graduation. It is beautiful—a deep red, made of rich and strong fabric worth more than her childhood home, with gleaming brass buttons and new boots so shiny she can see her reflection in them. She puts it on slowly, carefully, piece by piece. The pants, the tight boots, the fitted jacket and soft cotton blouse. When she looks in the mirror, she is stunned by what she finds.

Astrid smoothes her hands down by her sides, and thinks: she looks powerful. She looks _ strong. _ Brave, and competent, and unwavering. The woman she sees in the mirror is all she’s ever wanted to be—and now. Now she _ is. _

It is the day after her graduation. The day after the fire, after the poison, after doing what needed to be done. Above her head, in a room spelled silent, Bren is still screaming. He will be screaming for years to come.

Astrid smiles.

.

The logic is simple: there is something she is missing. Something that she’s been missing for over sixteen years. A disconnect, a blindness. It has been nearly two decades since the fire, since Master Ikithon left Bren in the care of the asylum, since Astrid looked away and moved on. Nearly twenty years, and she has grown up. She has grown into herself.

It has been sixteen years for Bren, too. Sixteen long years, she thinks, and she considers the weight of that as she walks. Her boots sink in loose soil, her clothes caught and tugged by stray branches. This is not a path well-traveled by, not a path known but for a few. It has been a long time since she came down this backwards forest road, but her feet still remember the way. 

Sixteen years. She was young, when she saw him last; he was only seventeen, still weedy, and in times of stress his voice would crack. He hated it, she remembers that. But he is not that seventeen-year-old anymore—he is old, now, thirty at least, and now when his voice cracks it does so not in youth but in rage.

Sixteen years, she thinks. So much time to change. So much time for things to go wrong. 

Her eyes narrow at the thought. Her fists tighten. _ Know thy enemy _ , Master Ikithon used to say, and she knew Bren, once—but that was long ago. This new Bren, older and worn and stuttering… she doesn’t know him. She doesn’t _ know _.

The logic is simple, her choice calculated. There is something she’s missing, and it’s far past time for Astrid to figure it out. Until she knows—until she understands—until then…

Her report can wait. Just for a little bit. Just for a while. Just until Astrid knows what to do, and what to think about it.

So she pulled on her cloak and packed her spellbooks. Tugged on her boots and pushed sweat-soaked hair from her face. Started on the trailing beaten path, and has been walking ever since. The midnight air cold and crisp, the breeze rustling through the leaves. 

It has not been long since the battle. She still smells like smoke, like ash, like burning. Her skin is still dry and bloody from the backlash of heat from Bren’s fire spells. But Astrid ignores it and continues on anyway, despite the lingering ache of her half-healed concussion, despite the pain in her wrists from the iron cuffs. She slips silently through the night with barely a backward glance. Walking swift, and quick, and determined. It’s been a long time, but she still knows the route by heart.

By the time dawn crests over the distant hills, Astrid is already at the asylum gates. 

.

Time passes. Years upon years, all building up. She kills the right people and tortures a few more, runs errands for Master Ikithon and keeps an ear out for the changing tide. Life goes on. She grabs drinks with Eodwulf and casts a ritual spell on a stupid cultist tiefling under Ikithon’s orders, burns down a few villages and stands tall and imposing at the necessary galas, letting her eyes track the guests. She eats fine food and buys herself a cushy capital house, talks to the right people and smiles cold and sharp. She holds wine glasses in gloved hands like a proper lady and unlike the country girl she was raised, and if she doesn’t drink from the cups, well, no-one really needs to know.

Her missions are varied, and all end in success. Eodwulf beams when he hears of it. Her superiors are pleased. Trent Ikithon rests a hand on her shoulder, the way he used to do only for Bren, and graces her with a tight smile.

“Well done,” he says. “Astrid.”

It is a small thing. So small. She goes home glowing, and smiles bright as she washes the bloodstains from her blouse. 

.

She has not been here in years and she can feel the weight of each one. The pressure is like a knife to her back. Sharp, pointed, accusing. When she pushes open the door, her skin still crawls.

They don’t recognize her, but they go still when she says Bren’s name. Disgust and rage and fear beneath it all. The story comes from the healers in fits and bursts. Six years ago, there was an incident, a mistake—a guard killed, a fire started. A patient missing. 

Six years, Astrid thinks, her mouth dry. Six years. He has been free for six years, and not once—

She learns something else, too. That night, when Bren snapped and escaped—he was alone. But for two months before that…

There is a mystery here, a disconnect. But there is a story, too. Bren, silent and unassuming and lying quiet for year after year after year. Eleven full years of compliance, to the point where Master Ikithon relaxed the restrictions around him. One guard, instead of two. A roommate allowed, to save for space.

“A madwoman,” the healers tell her, and their faces scrunch in remembered contempt. “Addled in the head. Crazy as they come, and stupid besides. Lady Astrid, I must insist, she’ll be no help to you, are you sure—?”

“Bring me to her,” Astrid says coldly, and the healers fall over themselves to obey.

.

It is not that Astrid can’t drink wine. She can. She can hold her breath and choke it down, or sip it fine and dainty like she’s supposed to. She can let it linger on her tongue, and pour it with a steady hand. She can do these things. It is just—

Bren’s voice in her ears; the taste of poison on her tongue, never mind that she never drank it; the way her parents fell forward, glassy-eyed and cold; the echo of screaming and the way the drink shines red in the light. A question she cannot forget. _ Why didn’t you break? _

(Why didn’t she?)

—it is just better, she thinks, to avoid the mess entirely.

.

The woman is sitting up when Astrid enters the room. Hands folded in her lap and her expression dreamy. Her hair is dark and coiled tight by her head; her empty eyes are black as night. Age lines set deep in her face, premature gray streaking through her hair. She doesn’t look up when Astrid enters, and when the healers shout for her attention, the madwoman doesn’t even blink.

“Leave me,” Astrid snaps to the healers, unamused by their bootlicking, and slams the door shut behind them. She turns back to the woman with narrowed eyes and straight back. She strides to the bedside with cold purpose, and scowls down at the woman’s unseeing gaze.

The woman has soft leather straps around her wrists and is dressed in a childish white smock. The bed is too big for her—starched sheets almost swallowing her whole. Her empty eyes are turned to the window, her distant expression unfaltering.

The dismissal is likely unintentional, but in this place, after all that has happened—it makes her gut twist. “Look at me,” Astrid snaps, and the woman blinks slow at the window and doesn’t even twitch.

Well, then. Astrid grits her teeth. “I have some questions for you,” she says, cold. “About someone you used to know, from here. He would be—this would be six years ago. A roommate. Bren Aldric Ermendrud. Do you know who I’m talking about?”

The woman stares at the window. Astrid bites back a snarl. 

“Answer me,” she snaps. “He— he was here, and you were his roommate, and three weeks after you had an apparent breakdown he killed a man and started a fire, and—you must know! Tell me!”

Nothing. Astrid shakes. “He has red hair,” she forces out. It is useless. Useless. She is back again in this awful place, speaking to someone who cannot hear. She hates it. But she still tries. “Blue eyes, white skin, freckles… He wouldn’t have spoken. He stared a lot. Even before, he—” She isn’t talking to the woman anymore. “He used to set leaves on fire when we were kids like an _ idiot _and laugh about it, because fire was always his to control, and he would ask questions about the strangest things, and hunt down books like they were treasure, and he—he—”

“He screamed every night,” says the madwoman, soft, and Astrid’s mouth snaps shut. 

She stares. The woman still isn’t looking at her—but her gaze has drifted away from the window, down to the bed, her skinny fingers plucking at a loose thread. 

“W-what?”

The woman doesn’t answer right away. She just hums, a tuneless sound, something thoughtful. “Every night,” she murmurs. “Over and over and over… never sleeping. Never asleep. Would that he could have slept.”

Astrid hesitates. The shock of receiving an answer dulls the rage that had built since coming here, and she slowly sinks beside the woman on the bed. She waits. A smile twitches at the corner of the woman’s mouth.

“They think I am stupid,” she confesses to Astrid, in a sly whisper. “Think that because I am mad I cannot hear them. Hah! I know more than they ever will. No one watches their tongue around the insane. Not them. Not you, either.” A wry twist to her lips. Her fingers coil and tug around a loose cotton thread. “All those voices in my head, and you think I can’t hear you too?”

Astrid says nothing. She feels—it is bizarre, almost, because it feels like a slap to the wrist. She feels shamed. She feels like a child, and when the woman meets her eyes, blank and black and _ knowing, _something in Astrid’s gut drops.

“They thought him too mad to know,” she says, distant. “And I too mad to listen. But he knew. Poor boy. He knew too much. It killed him in the day and ate him every night.” She twists the thread and it snaps. “And I, and I, I heard and heard and heard…”

Astrid stays quiet. Her mind is whirling. The bare bits of information the healers had let loose, the things that lurk between the lines. The messy print on this woman’s meager file. She had been a healer, once. Great renown, great power, great worth. But she was too weak, too kind. She turned over every body she found, and healed the dead until it broke her.

The realization is like ash in her mouth. “You—”

“I heard and I heard,” the woman murmurs, and her eyes snap to Astrid. “Hear enough, and then you start to think.” Her hands flex on the sheets and she smiles. “Not stupid,” she says, and her eyes are bright, bright, bright. “Not empty, either. Magic doesn’t wither. Magic never withers.”

“You healed him,” Astrid whispers, and the final piece clicks into place.

“Helped,” the woman corrects, and her eyes crinkle from the warmth of her smile. Her hand reaches out, and rests gently on Astrid’s cheek before she can even think to pull away. “Dear stranger. I can see so many shadows in your eyes. Would you like me to help you too?”

Astrid rips herself away, breathing tight. “_ No,” _ she snaps. Her blood is pounding. There is an echo in her ears. She flies to her feet, steps back out of reach. “No. I am not broken. I am not like _ you. _I don’t need—I don’t—”

The woman is still smiling, and her hands fall open and loose in her lap. “If you’re sure,” she says. Her voice is kind, strong where Astrid stutters. “The offer will be open to you always, dear stranger. A gift, for what you have done for me this day.” She sighs, sounding satisfied. “What a wonderful day. Such good news you have brought me.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Astrid snaps, and turns on her heel, striding to the door. “And I don’t care.” She throws open the door and stands in the doorway, breathing heavy—then freezes, realization striking through her. She is—is she—is she running away?

At her back, the woman speaks. Her voice, warm and sly. “If you are here… he got out, yes? He got free?” She can hear the smile in the woman’s voice. “How is he? How is my friend?”

Astrid doesn’t move. The woman hums.

“I’m so glad,” she says, “to hear he’s doing well.”

It is too much for her. Astrid slams the door shut. And behind the wood, through the layers and layers of stone in this disguised prison, she can hear the mad healer start to laugh.

.

Astrid is brilliant, is bright, is the best of all of them. She kills and she tortures and she stands strong. She is powerful. She is enough. Her hands no longer shake, and most days, nothing hurts at all. She looks traitors in the eyes as she breaks them and looks down with those same eyes at Master Ikithon’s new students, looks Eodwulf in the eye and lies to save his soul. She smiles, and smiles, and smiles, and the expression sits cold and hard on her face. 

She thinks, bizarrely, that it used to come easier. 

.

That night, she digs through a chest of rare materials and finds a silver mirror worth enough gold to make her late parents shake. She sits before the fire, the mirror in her lap, concentrating hard. For ten minutes she retains it, narrowing down her focus, forcing the spell through despite her lack of physical object to connect her to the target. It is not her forté, this spell, but she can still cast it. 

She wants to look for Bren. But she knows him. She knows him, and so she doesn’t look for him, though she wishes she could. Instead—she takes her spell, and Scrys for the monk.

She knows she’s done right when the Scry goes blurry, indistinct—fuzzed by whatever Bren has to ward off any eyes. She can’t see them, and she can’t tell where they are—but the monk is less protected than he, and Astrid closes her eyes and listens.

She cannot see him, but she can see other things. The monk, smiling broadly at a joke. Sitting against a cart and speaking in a halted tone, apologies and promises and gentle rebukes. Sees the firbolg cooking a warm meal and watches the tiefling dart around the group and fret. The goblin, fuzzy and unfocused, pressed against the side of one who cannot be Seen.

She cannot see him, but she can see them responding to him. Laughing. Smiling. Speaking kindly. Saying his name—_ a _ name, one she doesn’t know but suspects is his. _ Caleb! _the half-orc calls. Come over here, sit by us. 

She cannot see him, but she can hear, briefly—the sound of him laughing too.

She closes the spell, shuts her eyes to the projected scenes. Presses her hands against her face, and wonders at how strange it feels—to smile, to be happy for him, even as some part of her despairs. Jealousy is a burn in her throat. Bitter certainty like a drag at her heart. He is happy there. He is _ happy. _

He is a traitor.

Astrid pulls her hands away, and is startled to find the tears.

.

She goes home. She goes home. She goes home. Success after success, mission after mission. The imprint of Master Ikithon’s cold hand on her shoulder, burning like a brand. The whisper of Eodwulf’s bladed smile, sharper each day. The blood that stains her blouse.

She goes home. She hangs up her coat and slips off her boots, sits in a plush red chair by a big fireplace in an expensive house. Looks out the window, and watches the people milling below. Are you happy? Are you sad? They are so distant, so far away. She is so far above them, and the lingering touch of grass fields and childhood homes has gone dim in her memory. 

There is a bottle of wine on her desk. A card signed by the looping hand of her teacher. She takes a cup and pours a glass, and chokes down every swallow.

.

She is calm, when she goes to him. Settled, and sure, and secure. She stands straight and tall, and she looks him in the eye. There is no give to her. There is no regret.

“Master Ikithon,” she says, and doesn’t waver, not once. “I have something to report.” 

She tells him of the Mighty Nein. She tells him what—and who—she found there. She details faces and names and character traits, every slip of information they gave her. Their loose Common tongues, and all the secrets they spilled when they thought she could not hear them.

(She thinks, briefly, of the mad healer. Her smile. Her wry tone, her knowing eyes. An offer to help, and worst of all—the kindness in her voice, so genuine it felt like a foreign tongue.)

Astrid’s voice is not kind, and neither does it shake. Her hands are steady. But each word rests heavy on her tongue, and all she can feel is cold. Cold like the snow of her hometown, like the asylum rooms, like the look in Bren’s pale eyes when he chose to kill her. 

She tells Trent Ikithon of a man named Caleb Widogast, and in the back of her mind, a ghost lingers still. Bren as she once knew him. Smiling, laughing, screaming, and his ruined voice echoes in her ear: _ Why? Why didn’t you break? _

She doesn’t know. She will never know. And as she completes her report and waits for the verdict, the taste of wine heavy on her tongue, she watches Master Ikithon smile, and wonders if things would’ve been better, if kindness would come easier, had she broken that day too.

.

.

.

_ She is seven years old and lonely, when Bren Aldric Ermendrud first comes up and asks her to play. Seven years old and too lost in her own head to make friends. A little girl sitting propped up against a tree, throwing stones and watching them vanish into the waving grasses. _

_ He is her first friend, even if she is not his. The first to ask and the first to listen. The first to offer his hand, and say, “Can I try, too?” _

_ They play the rest of the day, and talk throughout it all. Where they live, what they like, who they will become. At sundown Bren’s parents call him home, and he leaves her behind with a wave and a quickfire smile. His eyes are bright against the glowing dusk; his laughter lingers long after he’s left. _

_ She runs home with stumbling steps and practically falls into her mother’s open arms. “I made a friend!” she cries, and her parents brighten, their smiles wide. Her mother presses her for the story. Her father laughs at the antics. They set the table together, weak meat and dark bread and a thin ale, and her father sits her on his knees and wishes for wine. _

_ Astrid wraps her arms around his neck and thinks about Bren, about games under the sunshine and promises to be better, to be more, to be something great. She’s sure Bren will be amazing, someday. And she thinks—maybe she can be amazing, too. _

_ “One day,” Astrid tells them then, “Mom, Dad, I’ll get you all the wine in the world!” _

_ Her father kisses her forehead. Her mother smiles, soft and fond. Their eyes are worn and their embrace is warm. She nestles into her father’s side, and drifts away under the candlelight glow, thinking of magic and greatness and the wine she will buy them, the things she will give to them, one day far off into the future. A promise to herself, a wish, tucked deep in the corners of her heart. _

_ And she has never been happier. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Caleb sequel-side story for this fic is now up!! You can read it [**here!**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20463032/chapters/48553757)
> 
> This chapter was extremely fun to write, mainly because it finally focused just on Astrid—her life, her thoughts, her struggles and her motivations. When starting this fic, my end goal wasn’t for Astrid to be redeemed, but rather, to set her up for the possibility of it. She can stay a villain or choose another side—the options are open to her now, and her future is clouded. In this chapter, she took a few (tiny, tiny) steps forward… and then a huge step back, but, at least she’s thinking about her own situation now?
> 
> I may or may not write an actual sequel to this exploring how this Astrid and Eodwulf could or could not be redeemed, but, that’s a question for future me. I do have ideas though, so, let me know if that’s something you guys would be interested in?
> 
> Also, fun side note: I really love the woman from the asylum. I have so many questions about her. Why did she help Caleb? What motivated her? I assume she had no idea who he was, and the idea that Caleb was helped (for the first time in eleven years!!! hell!!) by a stranger, out of the kindness of her heart, is a story I dearly adore. My assumption is that she used to be a healer, too—and that when she met Caleb, she saw someone that she COULD help, after all these years of being too late. (I really want to know more about her in canon, goddamnit.)
> 
> If you have any questions or just want to talk, [my tumblr](http://izaswritings.tumblr.com) is always open!!
> 
> Any final thoughts?

**Author's Note:**

> [If you wanna rec this fic, you can reblog it here!!](https://izaswritings.tumblr.com/post/187037093702/title-the-cruel-unbreaking-synopsis-some) Also, if you have any questions or just want to talk, [my tumblr](http://izaswritings.tumblr.com) is always open!!
> 
> Any thoughts?


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